Data and Code for: Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Michael Best, Columbia University; Jonas Hjort, University College London; David Szakonyi, George Washington University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Code			06/08/2023 12:22:PM
Data			06/07/2023 09:07:AM
README.pdf	application/pdf	103.1 KB	06/08/2023 08:25:AM

Project Citation:

Best, Michael, Hjort, Jonas, and Szakonyi, David. Data and Code for: Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-07-18. https://doi.org/10.3886/E184107V1

Project Description

Summary: Bureaucrats implement policy. How important are they for a state’s productivity? And do the tradeoffs between policies depend on their effectiveness? Using data on 16 million public purchases in Russia, we show that 39 percent of the variation in prices paid for narrowly defined items is due to the individual bureaucrats and organizations who manage procurement. Low-price buyers also display higher spending quality. Theory suggests that such differences in effectiveness can be pivotal for policy design. To illustrate, we show that a common one---bid preferences for domestic suppliers---substantially improves procurement performance, but only when implemented by ineffective bureaucrats.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Administrative Data

JEL Classification:
      D73 Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
      H11 Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government
      O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

Geographic Coverage: Russia

Time Period(s): 1/1/2011 – 12/31/2016

Collection Date(s): 3/1/2012 – 1/1/2018

Universe: Electronic auction public procurement data from Russia

Data Type(s): administrative records data

Methodology

Data Source: Data primarily comes from the Unified Procurement Information System (EIS Zakupki) of the Russian Federation.

Unit(s) of Observation: contract, product

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-07-18]

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